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“It’s never been harder to be a climate scientist,” claims a heartrending piece in New Republic.

Climate scientists working directly for the Trump administration are the most affected. A report published last week by the Union of Concerned Scientists describes a “culture of fear” as government scientists are gagged, sidelined, or fired, and funding cuts loom. “Some are afraid to utter the words ‘climate change,’” the report reads.

But wait. You haven’t got to the saddest part, yet.

“All action at the agency on climate has effectively stopped,” an EPA air quality scientist told The Guardian in June. And they’re being discouraged from interacting with other climate scientists. “There was a climate conference in Atlanta last month and EPA employees were told not to go,” the scientist said, “so even simple interactions are coming to an end.”

In sadness terms I would say that this is quite literally even sadder than a picture on the internet of a cute kitten with a bandaged paw.

Think about it. These EPA scientists work hard to spend your tax dollar. That trip to the climate conference in Atlanta would have afforded them a vital opportunity not just to rack up air miles but also to broaden their understanding of the challenges facing us. For example, by visiting the legendary Georgia Aquarium they would get to experience at first hand all the innocent sea creatures that are likely to be melted if ever ocean acidification actually becomes a thing.

Donald Trump is not a fan of wind turbines, as he has hinted occasionally on Twitter.

But there’s a very powerful lobby which would like us to see wind turbines as being clean, eco-friendly and vital for the planet’s future. So if President Trump is to crush this bloated, parasitical industry as it deserves he’ll need some serious fire support.

This piece by Matt Ridley is a big help. It convincingly demonstrates that wind turbines are even more of a monstrous stupidity than any of us had hitherto imagined.

It starts with a quiz, whose answer may surprise you:

To the nearest whole number, what percentage of the world’s energy consumption was supplied by wind power in 2014, the last year for which there are reliable figures? Was it 20 per cent, 10 per cent or 5 per cent? None of the above: it was 0 per cent. That is to say, to the nearest whole number, there is still no wind power on Earth.

Yep. All those views blighted; all that wildlife sliced and diced; all those billions of dollars of subsidies wasted – in order to produce a form of power so inefficient and triflingly irrelevant that it still supplies not much more than 0 per cent of the world’s energy consumption.

Nationwide, wind provided 5.6 percent of all electricity produced in 2016, an amount of electricity generation that has more than doubled since 2010. Much of the demand for new wind energy generation in recent years has come from Fortune 500 companies including Home Depot, GM, Walmart and Microsoft that are buying wind energy in large part for its low, stable cost.

But then, so many and varied are the half-truths, distractions and outright lies put out the wind industry that in any other sector half of these reptilian scumbags would be behind bars by now for selling a false prospectus.

Is any of the GOP presidential candidates actually capable of standing up for small government, liberty and free market capitalism? You’d have thought that celebrating these values would be an essential part of their job. But not, apparently, if you’re so desperate to beat Mitt Romney you’d sell your every last ideological principle down the river.

Rick Perry has called Romney and his ilk at Bain Capital “vultures”; Newt Gingrich has essentially accused of him of pillaging the companies that Bain took over; and Jon Huntsman has said that Romney “enjoys firing people.”

Sure this is very much the line of attack you’d expect from a Leftist opportunist like Joe Biden, as Tim Stanley noticed in his excellent appraisal this morning:

Already the Democratic National Committee is running ads quoting the “I like to fire” line. Only the day after Romney let it slip, Vice President Joe Biden told a rally in New Hampshire: “Romney thinks it’s more important for the stockholders, shareholders and the investors, the venture capital guys, to do well than for employees to be part of the bargain.” The prospect of a Romney nomination seems to be helping the Democrats rediscover their inner populist.

Well here’s the thing: capitalism isn’t nice. As Schumpeter noted, it involves a process called “creative destruction” which is why, in Britain, for example, we no longer have a hand-loom weaving or shipbuilding industry. Times change; industries die; economies develop. And in the process it cannot but be otherwise people lose their job.

But while free-market capitalism isn’t nice it happens to be the least worst of all the available options. Which is why the speech Mitt Romney should be making in defence of his behaviour at Bain is this one, kindly written for him by the abovementioned Troy Senik at Ricochet.

Over the past few days, you’ve been hearing my opponents say not only that I was responsible for people losing their jobs, but that I actually enjoyed the process. That ought to tell you that these individuals aren’t ready to manage something as complex as the largest economy on the planet. We’ve already had three years of a president who believes that jobs are created or lost based on what kind of mood employers wake up in in the morning. But that’s just not true. Unlike politicians, employers have to face the harsh reality of balance sheets. Unlike politicians, employers often have to sacrifice today to ensure that they can keep the doors open tomorrow. A bad day for a politician is flubbing an interview. A bad day for an employer is not knowing how you’re going to meet the next payroll period.

I would remind my opponents – as I would remind President Obama – that work is a form of public service. Our ability to make money is directly tied to our ability to provide something of value to our fellow man. But sometimes when the customer’s needs change or when we lose ground to our competitors, we have to make changes. We don’t choose these circumstances. As a matter of fact, we hate these circumstances. But, like many Americans that are struggling today, we accept the things that we cannot change, we make the hard choices, and we persevere. That is never an easy task. And unfortunately, sometimes people lose their jobs as a result. But what, I wonder, do my opponents think the alternative is? If a company on the brink of failure has no choice but to let a few employees go now or to see all of their jobs disappear eventually, what should they do?

Those are the kind of painful choices that people face in the real economy. And I find it telling that that concept is foreign to my opponents. They’re not foreign to the American people – because they’re living through them every day. You can talk to anyone who’s ever sat behind a manager’s desk – whether it’s in a corner office or a corner store – and they’ll tell you that there’s nothing that they hate more than having to fire someone. Americans take pride in their work. Losing a paycheck hurts. But losing your sense of dignity hurts more. My experiences in business didn’t make me enjoy firing people. It made me loathe the politicians in Washington for whom those people are nothing more than statistics on a spreadsheet.

So let me tell you something that my opponents don’t understand. In businesses like the one I was in, you do well when the company you’ve invested in does well. And when they do well, it creates a virtuous cycle. Employees are better off because a thriving company can create jobs or increase pay and benefits. Consumers are better off because they can meet their needs within their budgets. And yes, management profits too when things are going well. And if my opponents have a problem with that, they’re running in the wrong primary.

Will Mitt Romney ever say such a thing? Of course he won’t. Why won’t he? Because, like David Cameron, he’s one of those “conservatives” who believes the best way for a conservative to “win” an election is to pretend conservatism doesn’t exist. This policy hasn’t done much for the cause of conservatism in Britain. I doubt it will do much for the cause of conservatism in the US either. Roll on 2016

August 28, 2011

On US talk radio the other evening, I happened to mention to my hosts how much better things were looking in America, now that they had Rick Perry as a voting option. President Obama is toast – I think on that we can all agree. But up until quite recently, we weren’t exactly spoilt for choice as to who might replace him. Now that Bachmann has shown she has legs and Perry has finally ended his shilly-shallying as to whether or not to run, Americans can look to the future with at least a glimmer of hope.

But how much hope, that’s the question. I can’t say that either is my dream candidate. My dream candidate would either have been Paul Ryan or Allen West. Yeah yeah, too young and inexperienced to run, yadda yadda, better chance next time, I’ve heard all that before. The point though, surely, is that there may not be a next time. This next presidency is it: the Big One; the one that will decide whether America – and by extent the free West – gets to climb out of the Depression and spend a few more decades in the sun, or whether the Barbarians storm through the gates and we enter a new Dark Ages.

Anyway, when I mentioned Perry’s name there was what sounded like a deathly silence. Perhaps I was imagining it but I think what I was hearing was the scepticism and uncertainty a lot of Republicans and independents are feeling towards Perry right now.

When I heard him speak in Dallas a few months ago at the Heritage Foundation’s Resource Bank conference I was quite impressed. I like Texas. I like the spirit of Texas. It is – as Perry was at pains to point out – the Anti-California, which is to say it is virulently anti-regulation, pro-liberty, pro-low-taxation. This is why – duh – Texas employment levels have risen in the last decade even as California’s have plummeted. Perry was most tickled at the fact that the Californian state government had sent a delegation to Texas to see whether it could learn anything from its success.

What I liked about Perry was his folksy but straight-talking manner. Everyone hears a lot of his fellow Texan Dubya in him. But I heard also the odd echo of Reagan. It was all a polished act of course. All that naturalness and ease, I got the distinct impression, had been very carefully practised and worked on. Still, he talked the kind of language we wanted to hear, that was the important thing: fiscal conservatism; small government; less regulation. Definitely not another Dubya which is the last thing America needs right now – one of those notional conservatives who spends more like a Democrat and forges the usual corporatist alliances with the usual vested interests. The US needs a Tea Party guy, not a RINO.

Is Perry the real deal, though, or a just a plausible imposter? Too many people whose judgement I respect have since told me that there’s something slippery about him. He doesn’t honour promises. He’s another corporate shill. He’s offhand and ungrateful to anyone he thinks is of no use to him. He doesn’t pay his dues. These do not sound to me like signs and portents of the Reagan Mk II America and the world so badly needs.

Fielding audience questions after brief remarks that dwelled largely on fiscal and economic issues, Perry encountered one skeptic who said he was quoting from Perry’s 2010 book, Fed Up!: Our Fight to Save America From Washington, then asked whether misgivings about climate science fueled distrust of federal research in general.

“I do believe that the issue of global warming has been politicized,” Perry answered. “I think there are a substantial number of scientists who have manipulated data so that they will have dollars rolling into their projects. I think we’re seeing it almost weekly or even daily, scientists who are coming forward and questioning the original idea that man-made global warming is what is causing the climate to change. Yes, our climates change. They’ve been changing ever since the earth was formed.”

Nope: nothing to disagree with there.

And Bachmann? Well, I suppose there are worse crimes than wishing a dead rock star “Happy Birthday.” More than that, I just don’t know enough about her to say, yet – except that if America is going to have its first female president, I’d much rather it were her than one called President Clinton.

UPDATE.

I’ve decided I don’t like this blog post much. I agree with all the stuff about Perry but unfortunately I wrote the headline first, then changed my mind when I wrote the piece, but couldn’t change the headline because it was already in the system waiting to go because I accidentally pressed the send button. T0 be honest, I’m still much, much more excited about the possibility that Paul Ryan might still stand. And yes, I’m not ruling out Ron Paul either – though I have serious reservations about his foreign policy positions.

3 thoughts on “President Perry or President Bachmann? It’s the only question remaining”

John says:28th August 2011 at 3:48 amYou are total idiot. Come on over to Texas and Louisiana and see the pollution these refineries are spewing into the atmosphere 24 hours a day, year after year, for the past 50 years. Come on over to Texas where we have had 30 straight days of record 100 degree plus days with 1 inch of rain. Come on over to Texas where the worst drought in the history of Texas has cost Texas farmers $5 billion dollars in loast crops that have burned up. You are a freaking libertarian idiot.

Ned says:28th August 2011 at 9:07 pmJames, I got introduced to you via CSPAN2 the other night, so I can’t say I know much about you. As a libertarian, I’d be interested in what you have to say about supporting candidates that have a strong socially conservative agenda. Personally, it scares to me to support candidates like Bachman and Perry who call for a smaller role of Federal Gov’t in people’s lives and then at the same time have a laundry list of socially conservative laws they want to keep implemented/enforced from a Federal level. To me, true conservatives (aka libertarians) should encourage and nudge people to live their free lives to the highest of moral integrity with accountability on the individual to make the right choices in life and at the same time reduce the role of the fed govt by liberalizing laws on drugs use, prostitution, gay marriage, etc. Socially conservative laws at a federal level are ineffective for the most part and grow the power of the Federal gov’t while stealing resources that could otherwise be put to good use (border patrol, infrastructure improvement, etc.)Also, I’d be interested in your take on how you think the Fed Govt can and should support the economy. I back “The Economist’s” magazine’s point of view that in the short term we need stimulus from the Gov’t and at the same time create a game plan to sharply reduce fed govt spending in 3-5 years time by cutting Defense, reforming Healthcare, cutting subsidies, etc.

thanks,
Ned

Gordon says:29th August 2011 at 5:39 amDroughts, heatwaves, crop failures are all ignored. But minute the first drops of snow lands somewhere in this world, expect Delingpole to start foaming that the scientists are in on a scam and we’re actually global cooling.